EVA GABOR

Actress Eva Gabor, best known for her role as an out-of-place city socialite stuck on a farm on TV’s “Green Acres,” died July 4 in Los Angeles. She was 74.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center officials said she died of respiratory distress and other infections.

She was hospitalized June 21 after breaking her right hip in Mexico.

Gabor’s manager of 38 years, Raymond Katz, and her sisters, Zsa Zsa and Magda, were at her side.

Born in Budapest on Feb. 11, 1921, the actress began her career as a cafe singer and ice skater. She moved to Hollywood in 1939 and landed a contract with Paramount Pictures; her films included 1946’s “The Wife of Monte Cristo.”

Her career didn’t take off until the 1950s, though, when she appeared on Broadway, in films, on television and in a Las Vegas nightclub act with her sisters. It was during the ’50s that the much-married Gabor sisters gained notoriety for their love lives. Eva Gabor, who was credited with coming up with the line “Marriage is too interesting an experiment to be tried only once,” was married five times.

Gabor, the first of the sisters to move to the U.S., earned early kudos playing an unemployed acrobat in the 1950 Broadway show “The Happy Time.” From critical acclaim in the theater, she moved on to her own TV interview program, “The Eva Gabor Show.”

Her films in the 1950s included “Artists and Models” (1955), with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; the 1957 remake of “My Man Godfrey” with David Niven; “Don’t Go Near the Water” with Glenn Ford (1957); and the 1958 musical “Gigi.” Her last film appearance was as a voice in Disney’s animated feature “The Rescuers” in 1977.

Gabor was the slightly daffy housewife Lisa Douglas opposite Eddie Albert’s farm-loving husband on the CBS sitcom that aired from 1965 to 1971. In 1990, Gabor returned to farm living when she starred in the telefilm “Return to Green Acres.”

In later years, the platinum beauty ran a multimillion-dollar wig company.

In addition to her sisters, she is survived by her mother, Jolie, of Palm Springs.

A Mass will be celebrated at 7 p.m. July 11 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.